Bernard Madoff: Business Schools Want Me to Help “Work on Ethics Courses”

Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernard Madoff claims academia is calling him – for help with ethics. In a prison interview published in the Financial Times, Madoff said several business schools have approached him to “work on ethics courses.”

He said his sights were set on Harvard and Northwestern.

A spokesman for Harvard told the Daily News that “it seems unlikely” Madoff meant the institution had reached out to him. In an emailed statement to the Daily News, a Northwestern spokesperson also denied the university had contacted the schemer.

For now, he’ll have to stick to his job at the FCI Butner commissary, which inmates call the “money management department.”

Madoff, prisoner 61727-054, began serving 150 years at the federal prison on July 14, 2009, after his $65 billion swindle unraveled.

After setting “ground rules,” Madoff, 72, told his interviewers that he accepted responsibility for his shocking financial crime.

But Madoff – who also revealed that he passed the time by reading Danielle Steel romances – then went on to cite pressure from forces he couldn’t control and to blame investors who should have known better.

Up until the 1987 market crash, Madoff told the magazine, he was getting legitimate returns on investments.

“The long-term gains started to evaporate,” he said. “But they refused to close it out – they were greedy.”

Madoff said his wife, Ruth Alpern, and his two sons, one of whom committed suicide since Madoff’s arrest, had no knowledge of his crime.

The two have become the focus of a probe by the trustee in charge of retrieving ill-gotten gains.

If Madoff were able to teach, he wouldn’t be the first disgraced bold faced name to mold young minds. Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer became an adjunct political science professor at the City College of New York.

Former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey, who resigned in 2004 amid an affair with a male staffer, went on to teach ethics, law and leadership at Kean University.

And Gary Hart, former Congressman from Colorado considered a presidential frontrunner before his affair was exposed, became a scholar in residence at the University of Colorado.